Koch Brothers celebrate their victory (from The Best Democracy Money Can Buy)

When RyanCare-TrumpCare finally ended up face-down in the swimming pool, triumphalist Democrats whooped and partied and congratulated themselves on defeating the Trump-Ryan monstrosity.

But deep in their counting house, counting their gold, three brothers cackled with private jubilation.

David and Charles Koch knew the day was theirs.

Joining them in the celebration was Brother Billy, William Koch, who will share in their $21 billion windfall that the President arranged for them only hours before TrumpCare crashed””when Trump announced his State Department had formally approved the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Let’s start with that $21 billion.

The XL Keystone Pipeline would take the world’s heaviest, filthiest crude from Canada’s tar sands, and snake with it all the way down to Texas.

From Greg Palast’s film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits

Now here’s a question I never hear from our sleep-walking media: Exactly why are we sending oil all the way across the United States to Texas. I mean, doesn’t Texas already have a little oil?

In fact, Texas is drowning in oil, choking in it. But the Kochs’ Texas refinery can’t use much local crude. The Koch Industries Flint Hills refinery on the Texas Gulf Coast was designed specifically to crack only the world’s “heaviest” (i.e. filthiest) crude.

Texas crude ain’t heavy enough, ain’t dirty enough, for the Kochs’ Gulf Coast operation, originally designed for imports for the world’s major source of heavy crude: Venezuela. The price the Kochs paid for Venezuela’s oil was set by its President Hugo Chavez, and now, by Chavez’ chosen successor, Nicolas Maduro.

Chavez and Maduro both told me they’d squeeze the Kochs by their tankers. They have.

Enter the Mounties: Canadians sell their super-heavy crude at a $12 to $30 a barrel discount to the Venezuelan price. If the XL Pipeline is complete, the Kochs can suck down Canada’s cheap cruddy crude for a minimum savings of $1.27 billion in a single year.

The Kochs pocket billions while we fry: burning the Canadian tar sands reserve will, all by itself, raise the temperature of the entire planet by 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

Over the life of the XL Keystone Pipeline, the various Koch operations will put at minimum …more

As someone who knows president Nicholas Maduro, Hugo Chavez’ successor, (and Maduro’s opponents), I can say that I’ve never met a head of state (and I’ve met many) who absolutely gives a real shit about the average working person of his nation.

Venezuela is Occupy Wall Street on its head: the 1% are out in the street, violently hoping to overthrow the government elected by working people. Are the Kochs involved?

Since the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that money essentially equals speech in Citizens United v. The Federal Election Commission in 2010, and later in the US Court of Appeals Speechnow.org v. the Federal Election Commission decision, unregulated “expenditures” have flowed to so-called Super PACs.

Both conservative and liberal groups have rushed to create these organizations that supposedly exist to work on “social welfare” causes.

However, they are often sham non-profits whose sole purpose is to support or attack …more

Far more insidious, more corrosive and dangerous than the Governor of New Jersey playing traffic warden is the story of Gov. Chris Christie’s secret meetings with a gaggle of billionaires — and the legality of the spending by the front organization set up following these hidden hugger-muggers.In 2012, a tax-exempt “social welfare organization” called Committee for Our Children’s Future, CCF, ran a series of TV ads telling America that Governor Christie has performed more miracles in New Jersey than Jesus did with loaves and fish. The New York Times found some old college chums who said they set up the “Children’s” crusade for Christie. But the ads cost about $6 million. The Times didn’t ask how Christie’s buddies, not wealthy guys, found the six big ones.

But CCF was not started in 2012. When I heard “Children’s Future,” my nose started twitching. I smelled Koch.

Get the full story of Chris Christie and his Koch addiction in the book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: Greg Palast investigative Karl Rove, the Koch Gang and their Buck Buddies and the film of the investigation on the DVD Vultures & Vote Rustlers.

I can’t take it anymore. All week, I’ve watched Nelson Mandela reduced to a Barbie doll. From Fox News to the Bush family, the politicians and media mavens who body-blocked the anti-Apartheid Movement and were happy to keep Mandela behind bars, now get to dress his image up in any silly outfit they choose.

It’s more nauseating than hypocrisy and ignorance. The Mandela Barbie tells us in a squeaky little doll voice, not his own, that apartheid is now “defeated” – to quote the ridiculous headline in the Times.

Poor Mandela. When he’s not a doll, he’s a statue. He joins Martin Luther King as another bronzed monument whose use is to serve a new version of racism, Apartheid 2.0, worsening both in South Africa – and in the USA. …more

Activists alert:Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his son Connor Kennedy were arrested Wednesday in Washington while protesting against approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline.A rally in Washington, DC, protesting the Pipeline, has been called by Forward on Climate for Sunday, February 17. Bobby Kennedy, my partner in these investigations, is a contributor to Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: Greg Palast investigates Karl Rove, the Koch Gang & their Buck Buddies, the book on which this report is based.

According to the transcript of the secretly recorded tape, Charles Koch was chuckling like a six-year old. Koch was having a hell of a laugh over pilfering a few hundred dollars’ worth of oil from a couple of dirt-poor Indians on the Osage Reservation.

Why did Koch, worth about $3 billion at the time (now $20 billion) need to boost a few bucks from some Indian in a trailer home? Koch answered:

“I want my fair share – and that’s all of it.”

Now “all of it” includes a pipeline, the Keystone XL, which would run the world’s filthiest oil, …more

I’ve been tracking a tube of black putrid ooze, a toxic viper slowly slithering 2000 miles across the belly of America, swallowing all water aquifers, politicians and reason in its path.

The XL Keystone Pipeline.

As Nagini, the murderous snake in the Harry Potter tales, had its master Voldemort, I figured the Keystone XL Pipeline must also have its own dark lords.

I smelled Koch.

David and Charles Koch are each worth $20 billion–and they’re quite certain that’s not enough. And so they need the XL Keystone Pipeline.

The XL Keystone will take Canadian tar-sands oil, the filthiest crude on the planet and suck it down to Texas Gulf Coast refineries. Alberta’s oil-glop reserve, if it can get to the US market, will warm the planet by nearly .4°C all by itself.

Why in the world would America pistol-whip Mother Nature to bring oil to Texas? I mean, it’s just plain weird to suck heavy tar oil out of Canada, drag it across the entire middle of the USA to import it into the oil-exporting Lone Star State.

In today’s Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Court ruled that corporations should be treated the same as “natural persons”, i.e. humans. Well, in that case, expect the Supreme Court to next rule that Wal-Mart can run for President.

The ruling, which junks federal laws that now bar corporations from stuffing campaign coffers, will not, as progressives fear, cause an avalanche of corporate cash into politics. Sadly, that’s already happened: we have been snowed under by tens of millions of dollars given through corporate PACs and “bundling” of individual contributions from corporate pay-rollers.

The Court’s decision is far, far more dangerous to U.S. democracy. Think: Manchurian candidates.

Listen to Palast explain the oil game in Iraq, the deal behind the U.S. attorney scandal, Hillary Clinton’s shameful corruption and her husband’s pardon of arch-criminal Mark Rich, and the deal struck by Republicans to impeach Bill only for the silly sex scandal instead of his felonious relationship with the Indonesian Riady family billionaires as long as the Democrats promised not to expose the Republican’s felonious connections to the American Koch family billionaires.

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@Greg_Palast As long as candidates continue to accept bogus results, GOP tactics work. Not wanting to look like a sore loser is understandable but 🤬 ! GOP is dirty. It's a street fight. Act like it. Contest it. Go to court when warranted.